January 19, 2018

Flu outbreak: UK deaths triple with GPs seeing major rise in patients

Almost three times as many people are dying of flu in the UK this winter as last year, figures reveal.

After 35 more deaths last week, 120 people across the country have died of flu-related symptoms since early October, compared with 45 in the same period in 2016-17.

Separate figures, released on Thursday by the Royal College of GPs, showed that more than 30,000 people visited a GP last week as a result of influenza-like illness, an increase of more than 9,000 compared with the first week of January.

However, Public Health England (PHE) declared that while flu was rendering the largest number of people seriously unwell since the winter of 2010/11, it was still not an epidemic.

Last week saw 598 people admitted to hospital with flu, of whom 198 were so sick they had to be treated in an intensive care or high dependency unit. However, both numbers were lower than the previous week.

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Almost three times as many people are dying of flu in the UK this winter as last year, figures reveal.

After 35 more deaths last week, 120 people across the country have died of flu-related symptoms since early October, compared with 45 in the same period in 2016-17.

Separate figures, released on Thursday by the Royal College of GPs, showed that more than 30,000 people visited a GP last week as a result of influenza-like illness, an increase of more than 9,000 compared with the first week of January.

However, Public Health England (PHE) declared that while flu was rendering the largest number of people seriously unwell since the winter of 2010/11, it was still not an epidemic.

Last week saw 598 people admitted to hospital with flu, of whom 198 were so sick they had to be treated in an intensive care or high dependency unit. However, both numbers were lower than the previous week.